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Prospective residential buyers who find prices of single family homes increasingly out of reach can turn their attention to multi-family dwellings which some home builders have foreseen as a growth market, Sarasota Bay Real Estate said. Home construction companies are aiming at the housing market segment which can afford to pay for a new residence below the $250,000 level, the full service realty firm noted in December.

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Prospective residential buyers who find prices of single family homes increasingly out of reach can turn their attention to multi-family dwellings which some home builders have foreseen as a growth market, Sarasota Bay Real Estate said. Home construction companies are aiming at the housing market segment which can afford to pay for a new residence below the $250,000 level, the full service realty firm noted.

The thrust of the developers, Sarasota Bay Real Estate said, is basically to accommodate more homes onto a residential acreage so that the per-unit cost turns out as more affordable in the market. Several factors have combined to boost prices of single family homes, a trend that prompted home builders to accelerate developments projects involving condos, town homes, and carriage homes. The cost-push factors for single family homes which encourage a shift to multi-family developments include increasing costs of labor and construction materials and declining home inventories.

In Sarasota, the months of home inventory were reported close to their ten-year lows this November. For single family homes, the level stood at 4.1 months of inventory for the month and 6.1 months for condos.

Jill Meeks, sales and marketing VP for home builder D.R. Horton, confirmed that with rising construction costs, it is difficult to find a new single family home below the $250,000 range. The company’s portfolio of residential offerings includes carriage homes (four residences per building) and town homes (six to eight dwellings per building). These market options are priced in the $150,000–$250,000 range. The floor plans of these multi-family residences measure from 1,300 square feet to 1,950 square feet.

Anticipating the higher demand for multi-family homes, Meeks said D.R. Horton has started building and marketing town homes and carriage homes in Southwest Florida as early as two years ago. It expects to build more, she added, saying that D.R. Horton is looking for new sites for future multi-family housing development. Among other purchase deals in recent months, the developer was reported to have bought ten additional lots in the Palmer Oaks Estates in Bradenton and four more lots in the Pennington Place community subdivision in Venice.

D.R. Horton already has existing carriage homes in Palmer Oaks; each has a floor plan of between 1,500 square feet and 2,000 square feet. Overall, D.R. Horton has eighty-six new construction permits for multi-family residences. Meeks said the market for multi-family residences includes baby boomers and retirees in search for a second home in Florida as well as those professionals in search of modestly priced housing.

Lennar Homes is a developer even more keen on multi-family home construction, with its 122 permits for multifamily homes in the twelve-month period ending this September. Currently, Lennar’s offerings include condos in Riverstrand's maintenance-free Terraces condo in Bradenton where a two-bedroom unit with a floor plan of 1,100-plus square feet can have an asking price in the high $100s.

Neal Communities, Sarasota Bay Real Estate noted, is another developer aggressively looking for new land to purchase and develop into subdivisions with multi-family options. One of its recent projects is the Fairfield community in Bradenton launched this November. Its residential offerings include paired villas with floor spaces of 1,434 square feet and 1,524 square feet. Maintenance-free, these villas have two designs available at base prices also in the high $100s.

About Sarasota Bay Real Estate

Sarasota Bay Real Estate is a full service real estate brokerage in Sarasota Florida owned by Sarasota real estate broker, Christina Miller, and marketing professional, Roy Hunter. Together they, and their team of well-experienced agents, provide the best-in-class real estate marketing services for the properties in the company’s inventory.

Sarasota Bay Real Estate Internet assets receive more than 1,000 visits from perspective home buyers a day due to the wealth of local community information published by the company. Through a direct feed from the Sarasota MLS, Sarasota Bay Real Estate publishes the most current real estate information on the Internet for the Sarasota, Florida, market.